My interest in the seventeenth-century Southwest began at the University of New Mexico (UNM) in the late 1940s and early 1950s when I had the privilege of being a student of historian France V. Scholes. I had classes and seminars with France Scholes, and he was also the history member of my doctoral committee, ably chaired by anthropologist Leslie Spier. At the time I knew him, Professor Scholes was involved in a study of the complex struggles of church and state in the province of New Mexico during the turbulent seventeenth century. Scholes's interpretations were published in more than thirty articles, many in the
New Mexico Historical Review
(
NMHR
).Today, Scholes's published work and his large collections of primary documents, now housed at the University of New Mexico and at Tulane University, represent major sources for any study of this subject.
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I was aided in my Southwest work by other scholars, including Donald Brand, Florence Hawley [Ellis], W. W. Hill, and Dorothy Woodward at UNM; Harry Hoijer at UCLA; and at a slightly earlier period and somewhat more indirectly, Josiah Russell, the medievalist who directed my undergraduate Honors program at New Mexico. However, the individual who, next to Scholes and Spier, influenced me most was Eleanor B. Adams. Eleanor and I had the barest of nodding acquaintances during my student and early professional years. I came to really know Eleanor Adams around 1970 when she was editor of the
New Mexico Historical Review
, and I was returning to the Southwest after a long intellectual detour by way of Latin America, western Europe, and the Mediterranean. We were simpatico from the first, and to me Eleanor became not only a friend but also a mentor. Eleanor Adams had an extraordinarily fine mind, and she shared her knowledge and insights with generosity and flair. I was greatly influenced by her ideas on the Southwest and other subjects.
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